You can tell that Amanda Roche-Kelly has an appetite for sales and marketing within minutes of first meeting her. The managing director of Just Eat.ie sets out her business’s stall with a panache that’s engaging but breakneck. Roche-Kelly was working with Bewley’s when, in 2012, Just Eat approached her about joining its Irish operation.

“I wasn’t looking to move but agreed to meet Brian Hickey, the company’s managing director at the time,” she recalls. After a three-hour meeting, Hickey convinced her to join Just Eat as its national sales manager. A year and a bit later, Roche-Kelly replaced Hickey as Just Eat’s boss in Ireland.

Launched in Denmark in 2001, the online takeaway ordering service has grown rapidly and is now active in 13 countries. The group is headquartered in London and reported operating profit of €26m in 2014, up from €9m the previous year. Turnover surged by 62% while active users increased by a third to eight million. Taking advantage of the growth momentum, the company listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2014, with the flotation valuing Just Eat at €2bn.

Fast Growth

In Ireland, Just Eat has 750,000 active users and its mobile app has been downloaded 320,000 times. About 1,600 restaurants around the country are using the Just Eat platform and the company processed over two million orders in Ireland through 2014, representing 58% year-on-year growth.

In Association with

So what is Just Eat? It’s an online platform to order food from eateries in your locality. You input your address on the site or through the mobile app, then select the type of food you want from over 30 categories. Relevant nearby restaurants that have signed up to Just Eat are returned in a list.

Each of the listed restaurants provides a summary, menu and pricing, as well as delivery details. Customers need to set up a Just Eat account to use the online ordering service and they can post reviews of the restaurants they’ve ordered from. Good reviews bump restaurants up the listing.

Taking orders that arrive through Just Eat isn’t cheap for restaurants, who pay a 12% commission on every one received. Says Roche-Kelly: “We reinvest the commission in marketing and advertising because if we don’t get our message out there and people don’t know us, they won’t order through our platform.

Virtuous Circle

“The consumer pays nothing and we monitor restaurants closely to ensure that they are not upping their prices to cover the 12% commission. It’s not meant to be a charge that’s passed on – restaurants are meant to benefit from it in terms of how we spend it. The only way we can increase the volume is by marketing.”

It’s a virtuous circle for Just Eat. The more restaurants that sign up, the greater the choice for consumers. And as more orders are effected using the platform, the more money there is for Just Eat has to advertise the brand. However, reaching this stage has been a seven-year haul, with the UK parent yet to see a return on its Irish investment.

In 2009, two years after launching in Ireland, Just Eat had accumulated losses of €786,000. By 2012, the retained deficit had grown to €935,000 and the firm’s UK parent had extended loans of €2m to keep Just Eat viable in Ireland. The Irish operation brought its net deficit back to €617,000 in 2013 after booking a profit of €260,000, and year-end outstanding loans to the holding company totalled €960,000.

After launching in Ireland, the Just Eat brand was confusing and disjointed, weaknesses that were still evident in 2012, Roche-Kelly acknowledges. “We were just a sticker on a window and nobody knew what we did. We have now become real players but it took two years of hard work to get there.”

Sales Experience

Originally from Blackrock in Dublin, Roche-Kelly’s CV includes stints with Irish Distillers and Bewley’s. She was always interested in marketing but struggled to land a job after graduating from college. “I studied marketing and French and when I went looking for jobs I was told that I needed experience in sales.”

Roche-Kelly took up a sales role with Swedish Match, selling tights out of the back of a van. She eventually became territory sales manager for the company, a role that gave her a good grounding in business. “I really enjoyed sales once I got into it, so marketing went on the back foot.”

In 2000, Roche-Kelly moved onto Irish Distillers. “At the time, the drinks industry was the place to be for making money in sales and marketing. I worked there in sales there for seven years and got to dip my toes back in marketing through the role,” she says. In her final year with that employer, Roche-Kelly was promoted to senior brand manager for the wine portfolio. “I enjoyed it but I also missed being out on the road and the buzz of the sale.”

In 2006 Roche-Kelly was hired as sales manager with Bewley’s offered for the Dublin and Leinster region. “I managed a team for the first time, comprising six area managers. I loved managing the team, getting results and motivating them. We used to take in around €9m for Bewley’s in our area alone.”

When Just Eat came knocking in 2012, Roche-Kelly saw the opportunity for a sales role with a different dynamic. “All of the companies I’d been with were old, traditional companies – you kind of did what was expected. Just Eat is more entrepreneurial,” she explains. Once in place as Just Eat’s national sales manager, Roche-Kelly embarked on a process of rebuilding the team, before heading out on the road to rejuvenate the brand.

Brand Reboot

“People viewed Just Eat as the ‘side street’ brand and we needed to change this, putting more effort into cuisine types, brand image, etc. I got quite involved with the marketing side.” A lot of time was spent talking to restaurants and consumers, getting the message out that Just Eat was a company with success on a global scale.

“When I joined, we had about 800 restaurants signed up and when I moved on from sales director we were at 1,300. When I came into Just Eat, it was a ‘let’s see what happens’ company. There had been no consistency to the brand and I helped put more structure on the operation.”

When Hickey vacated his role In Ireland for a post in the UK in 2013, Roche-Kelly took up the reins and continued her redevelopment of the company, expanding the cuisine range to cate for gluten-free and other specialist diets, and securing sponsorship deals with music and other festivals.

Most recently, Just Eat has been expanding beyond evening fare with a lunchtime service aimed at office workers in urban centres. There are 150 participating restaurants, including KC Peaches and Lolly & Cooks in Dublin. Meanwhile, some new competition has emerged.

London startup Deliveroo raised €22m in a recent investment round and established a base in Dublin last year. Deliveroo targets higher-end restaurants for its food ordering service, and it provides its own delivery drivers. Just Eat only processes the orders and leaves the logistics up to the restaurants.

Competition

Further competition is also in the pipeline for Just Eat via Marvin.ie, an online takeaway service planned by another former Just Eat boss, James Galvin. Roche-Kelly says that she is nonplussed. As she sees it, Just Eat is sufficiently well established to outperform the competition.

“We have diversified into lunchtime and there are lots of new restaurants opening. Potential competitors might be a future threat but we’re not worried yet. We have to continue finding new little things to do, like the lunch service.”

DENMARK’S INTERNATIONAL STAR

Just Eat was founded by Jesper Buch (pictured) in Denmark and he launched the service in 2001. In 2006, the company launched its operation in the UK, with the Netherlands following in 2007 and Ireland in 2008. Since then, Just Eat has expanded through acquisition and alliances into Switzerland, Italy, Brazil, France, Spain, Mexico and Canada.

A venture into India was disposed of in February 2015. In May 2015, Just Eat announced its biggest deal to date with the €600m takeover of Menulog, an Australian food ordering company which has 1.4 million consumers in Australia and New Zealand.

The company listed on the London Stock Exchange in April 2014. The stock has performed strongly since the flotation, and trades on a p/e of 48, for a current market cap of €3.5bn. In 2014, three-quarters of group revenue was generated in the UK and Ireland and at year-end there were 45,700 takeaway restaurants using the network.

The company processes 1,100 orders per minute and it operates on a gross margin of 90%. After administrative expenses, the net margin in 2014 was 12%, up from 7% the previous year. This was helped by increasing the commission charged to takeaways to 12% from 11% previously. After big investment in TV marketing, Just Eat now claims 5.5 million active users in the UK and the platform processed its 100 millionth UK order last November.